Coffee Break
by Periphery
Summary: Post Signature. Elliot returns to New York to find a severely confused partner.


_Disclaimer: Everything recognizable belongs to Dick Wolf, or possibly a large drink corporation. The smoothie shop is mine, and that's about it._

_A/N: Now this comes after "Signature," and yes, I do realize that that episode aired a long time ago. No, I did not miss it. I began this story the next day, but upon the rerun Saturday night realized I'd interpreted the ending entirely wrong. I wound up with a severe case of writer's block. But I finally finished, I'm glad of it, and I'd very much appreciate your comments/questions/anything you want to say, really._

* * *

**Coffee Break**

* * *

"Why is she staring at me like that?" 

Chester Lake replies by snapping his fingers in Olivia's face. "She's not. Hey Ben, time to wake up."

"I knew that," Elliot says, irritated, as Olivia starts and scatters papers from her desk. She ducks to collect the work and emerges glaring at them both.

"What are you looking at?" she barks.

Lake backs away. "Nothing. I'm working." He demonstrates his ability to conveniently disappear, and Elliot is left looking across the desk at his partner.

"You were staring at me," he informs her.

"Was not. You were a handy focus point." Her hands flutter over her desk, resorting the mess of papers; she does not meet his gaze.

"Yeah, sure," he mutters. "You okay?"

"I'm _fine_." Busy fingers still. "You heard about Lauren Cooper." It is not a question, but a statement of what is surely on both their minds.

He leans back in his chair, ready to talk, and links his hands behind his head. "Yeah, Cragen told me the whole story. Seems to think you need watching out for."

Olivia snorts mirthlessly. "Of course he does," she grumbles, making as though to turn away, but her desk offers nowhere to go. The mug of coffee in front of her is cool, untouched. At a loss, Elliot glances around the office, searching for something to say.

"So," she finally breaks the silence, hunching over her work. "You're back."

He sits forward, but she won't look up. "I wasn't gone for that long, Liv."

"Yeah, I know." She glances at him, shakes her head slightly, and returns to the papers.

* * *

"She cried." 

"She _what_?"

Lake takes a step back and hits the corner. "After the – shot, she just . . . fell apart, you know?"

He doesn't know. Elliot leans against the wall and crosses his arms. _Natural. Act natural._ "Now see, that's not Olivia."

"I know," Lake says earnestly, and in his eyes is something resembling honesty that only serves to fuel Elliot's mounting ire. He makes himself stay where he is, waiting for the younger man to elaborate. Lake shrugs, helpless. "I didn't know what to do with her. I definitely didn't expect her to be back at work – "

"She did the same thing when her mother died." Elliot is trying to picture his level-headed partner breaking down; he's only seen it a few times himself and never, ever in front of people. Not that Lake is people, per se; but now that he thinks about it Melinda looked at them strangely, and there was that tone in Cragen's voice . . . .

Lake snaps him back. "Looks like she's about to take off," he notes, looking past Elliot into the main office. "If you want to catch her?"

Action now, he thinks, analysis later. "Yeah, I do. Thanks, man."

Olivia's eyebrows go up when he grabs her arm in the hallway. "What?"

"Nothing. You drive here?" He knows the answer already. When Olivia can't sleep she kills time by walking or taking the subway; he's caught her at it even in the dead of winter.

"No. Don't offer me a ride."

Oh yes, something is wrong with this picture. "Why not?"

"Because . . . because I don't want one."

He considers carrying on the 'why not' game, but maybe cutting to the chase is a better option. "Come on," he says, prodding her down the hall. "I'll drive you home."

"Elliot –!"

"I'm not offering, I'm ordering." He cannot explain exactly why she follows, but she does.

All the way to her apartment Olivia talks on about their latest case; Elliot grunts noncommittally at appropriate intervals and listens for how often she repeats herself. When they pull up in front of her building, she turns to the door with a sigh of relief. He locks the car from the driver's side.

She turns to him slowly, as though he is a suspect she is sizing up. "Let me _out_," she snaps, clearly aware that he is keeping a hand on the mechanism. He squints back at her, unsure if anyone else could have heard the tremor in her voice, rolling his hand back over the button to unlock her door.

He is expecting her to bolt, but instead she sinks back against the seat. "Sorry."

"Mmm." He wants to point out that she is not okay, but she must know he knows that. There are disadvantages to silent communication.

"She drank coffee with three sugars," Olivia says after a strained silence. "I mean, who does that? Kids, right, and old ladies – not the kind of person who's so – " She breaks off and looks out the window. Elliot waits. They've met people with incongruous habits before, after all, and certainly no cop is without a quirk or three.

"The thing is," she says, and he pays strict attention because the _thing_ is what he's been waiting for; "the thing is we're so much alike."

"Who? You and Cooper?" At her nod he scoffs. "No, you're not."

"Oh yeah?" she flares. "What would you know about it, Stabler?"

First off, he knows her; and he knows that Cooper took the law into her own hands, left a victim to die and then – He bites his tongue until he is sure he won't say any of this, then says instead, "Tell me how."

She shakes her head. "Well – she was talking about her mentor – the one who _also _committed suicide – "

"Yeah, I know."

"She described him as the father she never had; she asked if I knew what she meant. Told her I had no idea."

"And she didn't see through that?" he asks absently; he is trying to figure out the coffee reference. Coffee is coffee, he supposes, no matter how many sugars. A cop's a cop.

Olivia studies her knees. "No, she did. 'Job's your family?' she said." She lifts her head to meet his gaze, a challenge. "That time I told the truth."

A cop's a cop. That could well be the reasoning that led her to this. Ergo it must be faulty. He wishes she would stop looking at him like that.

"Come on," he says abruptly. "Let's go inside."

A smile flits across her face. "Don't you know it's not good etiquette to invite yourself in?" she teases, climbing out of the car.

"I think Miss Manners will forgive me." He slams his door and comes around the car to push her along, thinking how strange it is to lead her on her territory.

Once inside her apartment, he sits Olivia down on her own sofa and hunts through the kitchen cabinets. She watches him as if this is completely normal; it makes him angry. "Dammit, Liv," he growls, slamming yet another cupboard that has failed to yield anything alcoholic. "Where do you keep the good stuff?"

She appears to find this hilarious, but by the time he turns to gawk at her, laughter has morphed into tears. Lost, Elliot crosses back towards the couch, slowly. He can't remember the last time he saw his partner like this. When she's upset she gets distracted, lashes out at him, walks to work. The peculiarity makes this all the more frightening.

When he sits he hooks an arm around her shoulders, reminded absurdly of a pick-up line Dickie recently demonstrated on his unamused twin. _If you had a parrot, would it be on this shoulder or _this _shoulder?_ Olivia starts to shrug him off, as Lizzie did her brother, but changes her mind and turns further into his arm, muffles the sobs in his jacket. He puts the other arm around her too, acts as an anchor although he doesn't know why she needs one.

_Why?_ It is a question he is trained to ask. Why should the death of a fed she hardly knew so affect the unflappable Benson? He is not entirely sure that he wants to know the answer, but some part of him disagrees. Coffee is coffee, that part says, no matter that one drinks it black and another with far too much sugar. A cop's a cop; Lauren is Olivia in those superficial details of job and family. Lauren is Olivia, but Lauren killed herself and here he keeps sticking, because Olivia would never – no.

He knows that, but does she?

"You're wrong," he mutters, not sure she can hear him; but her fists tighten in his jacket and he goes on, remembering what Lake told him, "You're not so alike as all that. She couldn't keep her head, she couldn't deal with victims, she had horrible taste in coffee, and for whatever reason she felt she had nowhere to turn." He swallows hard. "You won't make that mistake, Liv," he whispers, all but willing it to be true.

After several quiet moments, he realizes that Olivia has fallen asleep, right there on his shoulder. He sighs and starts to disentangle himself, but she sits up straight at the movement. "What?"

"You fell asleep," he informs her. "You'll be okay if I go?"

She nods, mortified. "Sorry – "

"No." He shakes his head, wanting to tell her that she's exhausted and should probably sleep for about twelve hours. "Just don't do anything stupid, okay?"

"Anything – " Her face transforms from grief to indignation. "Oh, Elliot, I wouldn't!"

"Well, what the hell am I supposed to think?" he flings back. It is perversely comforting to be arguing. They face off, a familiar pattern, until Olivia backs down.

"I . . . "

"Did you hear anything I said before?" Maybe it won't be so bad if she missed it all.

"Yeah." She attempts a smile. "You're right, El. About everything."

It is enough to reassure him; he heads for the door. "How about I pick you up in the morning?" he suggests. "I'll get us coffee."

"Maybe not," she says from the couch; seeing his panic she clarifies, "maybe not coffee."

"Oh. I'll figure something out." He can't blame her, if she's spent the past few days thinking about the stuff as much as he has in the last half hour. "But tomorrow."

"You'll pick me up," she confirms, her lips quirking upward. Probably she is laughing at his protectiveness. He turns to go, but her voice stops him. "El."

"Yeah?" He doesn't look back.

"Thank you," she whispers.

* * *

His youngest daughter looks up when he says her name, glad for a distraction from homework. "If you had a parrot," Elliot starts, grinning. 

"Shut up," Lizzie groans, returning to her history book. "I'm ignoring you now."

"Okay, okay, being serious." He watched her cautiously lift her head. "I need help, though this may be impossible. A caffeine recommendation." Lizzie is addicted to the stuff in all incarnations.

"Mountain Dew," she says. "Not that hard, Dad."

"Non-carbonated."

"_Flat _Mountain Dew. It tastes better that way anyway."

"No, really. Focus, honey, please."

She frowns, confused. "Okay . . . ."

"I need something that isn't coffee and isn't carbonated," he says, ticking it off his fingers. "And flat soda doesn't count."

"Tea?"

Reflexively he pulls a face, and his daughter laughs. "No coffee, no tea, no carbonation. That's a tall order, Dad."

"I know. That's why I came to the junkie of the family."

"Why no soda all of a sudden?"

"It's not for me."

Recognition lights her face. "Well if you ask me, if Olivia hates soda and now suddenly hates coffee she ought to give up on caffeine altogether."

"Blasphemy."

"Right." Lizzie taps her pen against the book, thinking. "There's this little place by the middle school that sells Coke-flavored smoothies. Cloud Nine Smoothies. I don't know if they're actually caffeinated, but you could ask. On no, does she hate the flavor?"

To his knowledge, Olivia has never tasted Coca-Cola – she's far too concerned about acid. "No, that sounds great. Address?"

Lizzie describes the store by landmarks. "The sign's bright pink; you can't miss it. Hey, will you get me one?"

"What flavor?"

"_Mountain _Dew."

"Of course."

* * *

Sinking into the passenger seat, Olivia looks blearily at the paper cup he hands her. "What the hell is this?" 

"Good night's sleep?" he asks rhetorically.

"Just fine," she lies, popping the top off the drink and sniffing it. "I didn't think smoothies smelled like that."

"They do when they're caffeinated." He doesn't tell her that it smells very much like the corresponding soda. "Lizzie told me about the place; that guarantees the caffeine content."

"Right." She takes a cautious sip and laughs. "That's actually pretty good."

"Really?" He plucks it out of her hand and tries it. "I like mine better."

"What's yours?" She eyes his smoothie speculatively.

"No idea," he says, handing hers back – he really does like his own. "Whatever the girl behind the counter thought would suit me." He ignores her smirk. "Something normal. I'm not about to break the coffee habit."

Olivia slurps noisily and looks away. Elliot sighs, partly at her and partly at the traffic jam up ahead. "I was thinking about that, actually."

"About giving up your coffee habit? Not if it makes you drink more soda."

The cars ahead are definitely not moving. He puts the car in park and just looks at her.

She plays with her straw, avoiding his eyes. "About how coffee is coffee?"

He must have said it aloud, last night, without realizing it. Or possibly she knows what he's thinking. "Yeah. About that."

"It is," she says flatly. "It's all the same, El. And what's to keep us from flipping – " She demonstrates with a hand. "Some sugar and cream, that's all it takes."

"You're wrong again."

"How?" she demands. "How am I wrong? I think it's a wonderful metaphor, myself."

What he is thinking is that his partner has never been one to follow anyone, so why should she become a parrot now? What he says is, "Come on, Liv, you're not honestly going to tell me that my coffee is no different from Lake's." He acts hurt and elicits a surprised laugh; Olivia is often quoted as saying that their youngest detective needs another decade's worth of practice making coffee. Elliot grins at her and goes on, "Iced? Frappuccino? Dark roast? That awful stuff from the ME's office? Oh, good, traffic's moving."

She is laughing in earnest now as he pulls back into the line of cars. "Melinda wouldn't be happy to hear you say that."

"That's why you won't tell her," he points out.

* * *

The rest of the unit laughs itself silly at the smoothies. Elliot ignores them with practiced ease, while Olivia tells them precisely where they can go and what Lake can do with his coffee once they get there. They slap hands under the desks when she isn't looking, muttering to each other, _Benson's back._

By two she is flagging, and Elliot is keeping an eye on the coffeepot. It always empties more slowly when full of Lake's brew, as if everybody coming through the precinct can sense who made the stuff. Eventually he dumps what is left and makes a new pot, to general relief. A mug of good black coffee is placed on his partner's desk when she is conveniently elsewhere, and as the detectives hunch over paperwork in the next hours, the liquid quietly disappears. Elliot looks up when a small hand snags his own empty cup and sees her heading for the pot. "You're back," he says, grinning, when she returns.

Olivia makes a face at him. "I wasn't gone for that long, El."

_finis_

* * *

_You took the time to read (presumably); now please take the time to review. Every message brightens a writer's day . . . and this writer is currently beating herself up for taking the time out of a hectic life to type this up. Please. Validate my waste of time. Hit the pretty purple button._


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